Well I feel like i just graduated from nincompoop high…the dumb Canuck who came down to the US to give the locals something to laugh about.
So, I’m hanging out in Powell’s bookstore, the coolest and biggest new and used bookstore i’ve ever seen in my life…I mean these guys have a whole 2 shelf sections on calligraphy books where most bookstores like Chapters or Barnes & Nobles might have a half dozen books at most. I found a couple used books of interest…nothing amazing. But, I bumped into a guy that was browsing the same section who asked if I was finding anything interesting. He turns out to be an old sign artist in Portland who has been in sign business for 40 years…we exchanged names and he knew several of the calligrapher names I threw out. Turns out he’s part of the calligraphy guild in Portland and invited me out to visit. we had a good and lengthy chat and then it was getting time to get home and I’d be hitting rush hour anyway.
So, I reach into my pocket…uh oh. No keys. Shoot. think think thiiiiiiinnnnk. Oh yeah, I took my jacket off last minute cuz it was getting warm and I threw it in the trunk. Oh no, the keys were in my jacket of course. So, I have no cel phone and have to ask the desk clerk if I can call home. Wife’s not home. Shoot. Now to call a locksmith service for help. He’s nice enough to google for me and we find a service number to call….yup they can come out in 30 minutes. They take my Visa number and off we go. It’ll be $50 for the service. Steep but it’s better than waiting around for Kendra to have to come out with all the kids in rush hour to rescue me.
So, to kill time, I go back to the racks for 15 minutes then decide to head out to the parking garage. As soon as I hit the ground floor i see the locksmith car sitting there. He got there lickety split and had already sorted out my problem. He tells me that my keys are at the desk with the parking clerk. Oh yeah. I was about to say something and then realized in a flash that I had left my keys at the parking kiosk in exchange for a ticket stub (part of the policy of Powell’s parking arrangement)….so I mumbled something idiotic about how that was of course where they would be. And tried to make it seem natural that I would pay him for a service he hadn’t even provided…anything to deflect the complete retardedness of the situation. I had completely blanked that whole exchange from my memory until the moment that car was in front of me.
I think the fatique of this whole move is shutting down my memory functions. My brain is trying to tell me “there’s no more capacity in here for multi-stream processing.” Sorry, buddy, it’ll be a while before things are working the way you like them to. In the mean time I should probably expect to be in for some more profoundly knuckleheaded moments.
On a positive note, it was a great day of meeting new people. I met Martin French for lunch and he introduced me to his designer friend Steve Mitchell who also teaches an illustration class at the College where Martin teaches. It was a real privilege to hang out with them both and have them take the time in their busy lives to offer information and share resources with me. And then bumping into Lee Littlewood – the sign painter – at Powell’s was a nice way to end the afternoon in Portland
